Sensors Expo 2018: Optical Sensors Proving Worthy For Medical Applications | Sensors Magazine
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There’s a distinction, notes Ian Chen, head of the sensor division at Maxim Integrated Products, between sensors that provide some kind of “measurement, and those optimized for “monitoring.” In the first case, the sensors highlight one-time or otherwise infrequent patient responses. The “monitoring” activity, on the other hand, attempts to detect long-term patient conditions and variations. This provides a need to choose among sensor types. Measurement devices need to have high sensitivity, wide dynamic range and a fast response to one-shot stimulus.
Increasingly, optical sensors are used to visualize ordinarily invisible body processes like blood pressure and heart rate. By itself, heart rate monitoring (HR) doesn’t tell you very much, insists Chen, a featured speaker at June’s Sensors Expo. The rhythmic expansion and contraction of the blood vessels, might serve as an indicant of patient stress, he says. But it’s undoubtedly a combination of measurements that tell clinicians what’s going on with a patient.